Creating customer awareness of a brand’s products and all that the company stands for starts in one place. Creating a communicative environment between customer and company can help to increase sales and drive marketing. The 21st century has spawned new ways of communication for these two groups and understanding it is key. One need to know their audience as well as the perception that is given in order to increase sales and sales leads with more than the casual shopper who makes it to the checkout but then decides not to buy. Read more: 4 Tips to Create a Message Your Audience Will Literally Buy

I just ran across a great resource for information marketing called – appropriately – the “Information Marketing Roundup” and it’s right here: –> http://internet-marketing-muscle.com/information-marketing-roundup-issue1/ In this, author Bill Davis brings you the best posts on the internet about information marketing. This appears to be the very first post, and it’s a doosey. It’s got content from Copy Blogger, the Traffic Generation Cafe, Rand Fishkin of MOZ, Pro Blogger, and Guy Kawasaki. Content covered includes internet marketing, social media, content marketing, SEO, and blogging. It’s a great resource and I’m so glad I found it. I think you’ll find it useful, too.

When I posited this question to myself, “Is free traffic possible?” my first impulse was to write a one-word answer and call it a day. Just see what happens in the Comments. But I chose to expand on my answer. So, first, the answer. No. Here’s why. Nothing is free, not even internet traffic. Oh, sure, you may not pay a single red cent out-of-pocket for traffic to a website. You may not buy any PPC ads, buy links, or outsource. In short, you could do all the SEO you want all by yourself. For free. As in, you didn’t shell out any dough for the work. I know–I’ve done it. Hundreds of times. Didn’t spend a nickel on traffic. But here’s the ugly secret: I spent a fortune in opportunity costs, tools, and wasted time. Even if you don’t use tools, if you’re doing the work yourself, you must ask yourself, “What else could I be doing right now that would earn me money?” If you have an answer (and you should–even if it’s “I could get a job”), then that is money you will forego when doing traffic-building exercises. For example, if you worked full-time at building your site and driving traffic to it–let’s say 8 hours a day at $20 an hour–then you’ve squandered $160 a day. That’s money you could have spent effectively “buying traffic,” while working at a job. Now, I’m not here to tell you that you should spend 8 hours a day driving traffic to your website. That’s silly. Maybe you spend an hour each day doing that. Using the same data, that’s still $100 you could have spent just buying traffic or buying links that get you ranked higher in the search engines, which gets you more traffic. Even if all you’re doing is spending time telling your friends and associates (you network online) about your new site and how awesome it is and why they should visit and tell their readers to visit your site, that takes time and effort. It’s all translatable to an expense. Over several weeks, NOT doing the grunt work associated with SEO and traffic, you will: Feel a lot better about how you spent your money Feel even better about how you spent your time Be farther ahead in the game–you will have more traffic and have done little to no work on the site Your outside “career” may be earning you more money I’m also not here to tell you to “get a job.” But what I am saying is that everything has an associated cost–if you’re building links, you aren’t building products and services that would earn you money. Now, I am as guilty of this mindset as the next guy, and I’m trying to “rehab” myself. I like putting websites together and doing the SEO and other promotions. But there isn’t enough time in the day to do that and create income-generating products and services. So next time you think you’re going to spend a few […]